


The Garden is Wide

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [21]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Other, Separation, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21586237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: It’s nice to imagine our protagonists raising Warlock together; but if there’s one place they should anticipate close scrutiny from their respective sides, it’s in the home of the growing antichrist.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Akashic Records [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1446628
Comments: 25
Kudos: 256





	The Garden is Wide

**Author's Note:**

> You may have heard “The Water is Wide” with additional, much sadder verses, because this song about separation has been conflated with “Waly Waly,” a song about abandonment that can be sung to the same tune. This stuff happens in the folk tradition. Aziraphale and Crowley, of course, imprint on the first versions they hear of songs, like the rest of us. The only online cover that my cursory search turned up that doesn’t have the “Waly Waly” verses is a 7-minute Steeleye Span cover, which is mostly instrumental because that's way more time than the verses need. On the plus side, you can now listen to Steeleye Span while reading this fic.  
> Water is Wide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W626FKM8LxY&list=RDW626FKM8LxY&start_radio=1&t=10   
> Waly Waly: https://mainlynorfolk.info/june.tabor/songs/walywaly.html
> 
> “A Plague of Peacocks” is by the greatest English-language author of the 20th century, Diana Wynne Jones, and is the perfect story to model behavior for a young antichrist, as the four-year-old protagonist, Daniel Emmanuel, has awesome reality-bending power which he uses in a perfectly reasonable manner. It has been reprinted multiple times. (https://dianawynnejones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Plague_of_Peacocks)

Warlock kicked the bottom of the driver’s seat the whole time they waited at the gate, and five more times after they drove through, so that when he said: “I’ll get out here,” Sam, instead of arguing, said: “Hallelujah” and unlocked the door with a flick of his finger on the door button. “Just be inside before your folks get back,” he added.

“Yeah, yeah.” None of what had happened was Sam’s fault, so Warlock waved vaguely instead of shooting him the finger before taking off running a slalom around the heads of the sprinkler system, covering every inch of the lawn, so that the pounding of his heart and the pumping of his lungs were driven by the need to move his limbs, so that his brain did not pulse with his numerous wrongs, so that his fists didn’t flail at people who weren’t here, so he had no breath to spare for screaming his frustrations at the twilit sky. Eventually he ran out of sprinklers and collapsed in a heap near the rhododendrons, arms and legs noodly, head lolling back against the grass. Brother Blackbird called somewhere. All the Brother and Sister Pigeons and Doves burbled the way they always did. And Brother Francis sang.

He knew it was Brother Francis - nobody else sounded anything like him - but he normally favored happy songs, and this one sounded as sad as the end of summer.

_There is a ship, and she sails the sea._   
_She’s loaded deep as deep can be,_   
_But not as deep as the love I’m in._   
_I know not if I sink or swim._

Warlock sprang to his feet, heart pounding. Something must be horribly wrong, if _Brother Francis_ was sad! He ran in pursuit of the sound, toward the rose garden.

 _The water is wide. I cannot get over._  
 _Neither have I wings to fly._  
 _Build me a boat that will carry two,_  
 _That both shall row, my love and I_ \- oof!

The force of Warlock’s projectile hug would have pushed a less solid man into the hybrid tea roses, but Brother Francis only hugged him back with one arm, holding the secaturs well away from him with the other, and said, “Whoa, there! What’s the matter?”

Warlock leaned his full weight against him and looked up. “I dunno. Why’re you sad?”

“Me? Do _I_ look sad?” He didn’t, beaming down at Warlock the way he always did, as if Warlock was the best sight he could possibly see. Maggie from the kitchen said it was ridiculous that somebody with such awful teeth could have such a beautiful smile.

“You _sounded_ sad. You never sing sad songs.” 

“If I _never_ do, I can’t have been doing it just now.” He laughed at the face Warlock pulled, ruffled his hair, and went back to deadheading roses. “Sad is as sad does, I reckon. Sure, it’s sad to be separated, but the second verse is a plan, isn’t it? A boat to carry the both of them anywhere they want to go. Once it’s built, everything’ll be fine. Can’t be _too_ sad, if you’ve got a plan to fix things, can you?” _Snip, snip_. The scent of roses enveloped them, heavy and humid. “What’re you doing here, my dear, not that I’m not glad to have you? I thought you were seeing a movie after dinner.”

“I acted up in the restaurant so They went off somewhere with some lord They ran into and made Sam bring me home. How come you’re working so late?”

“I was so close to finishing, come dinner time, it seemed a shame not to come back out on such a lovely evening. It’s too bad, you not having your movie, and on your last night home.”

“It’s not _fair,_ ” said Warlock. “I wouldn’t have acted up if They hadn’t been rude first. _I_ have to listen to everybody. Why won’t They listen to _me?_ ”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them that.”

“I _did_! And They told me not to mouth off in front of Lord Whosis. So I didn’t say another word. But They _still_ said I was acting up! Just because I couldn’t sit still. So then I decided to act up for _real,_ to show them.”

Brother Francis made the sound that meant he wasn’t scolding Warlock, or saying anything bad about his parents, but had Opinions all the same. “Reckon there must’ve been a better way to handle that, all around, but it gets me the pleasure of your company, so there’s that silver lining. Though I don’t reckon as how I’m a good substitute for a movie, from your point of view.”

“It was probably a dumb movie, anyhow,” said Warlock, though he’d been eager enough to see it when he’d picked it out. “Only it would’ve been nice to not be in trouble on the very last day.”

“It would have.” Brother Francis dropped a tattered blossom into the basket at his feet and moved on to the next bush. “How’re you feeling about that school, then, now it’s looking you in the face?”

“I don’t know,” Warlock admitted. “What if nobody likes me?”

 _Snip, snip._ “What if somebody does? They will if you give them a chance.”

“What if people are mean?”

“Somebody will be, but you can walk away from him.”

“What if he’s my _roommate?”_

“Then you’ll have to study him. Like we did with Brother Fox. You can’t convince somebody to be nice to you, if you don’t know who they are or why they’re mean.” _Snip._ “Just remember, you can’t control anybody else, but you _can_ control yourself. You are who you choose to be. And when you choose to be kind, you’ll never choose wrong.” 

Warlock rolled his eyes, as if he hadn’t brought up mean people on purpose to hear Brother Francis’s familiar litany. He wasn’t at all certain that he _could_ control himself - his parents always behaved as if he couldn’t be expected to, and should let Them control him - but it was nice to hear somebody take it for granted. “But what if the food’s bad?”

“Oh, dear! Now, that _would_ be a terrible thing!”

“You’ll have to give me afternoon tea every day when I come back on hols, to make up for it,” Warlock suggested.

Brother Francis turned to look at him, gone as still as he’d been when they studied Brother Fox hunting mice on the compost heap. “Ah. Well. But I won’t be here when you come back on hols, my dear.”

Warlock blinked. “Why not?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow, too. S’one reason I wanted to finish the roses tonight.”

“But -“ This did not compute. Brother Francis _belonged_ in the garden. In _Warlock’_ s garden. Where he _lived_. “Why not?”

“S’time for me to move on, is all. Grownup reasons.” He wasn’t beaming anymore, his smile gone a bit wobbly. “It won’t be any fun around here without you, for a start.”

Warlock glared. Glaring was one of his best skills.

“None of that, now! S’not like I’m moving to Outer Mongolia. I’ll send you something at school once I get settled, and then you’ll have my address and phone number if you want me.”

“It won’t be the _same_!”

“No, it won’t.” Brother Francis resumed work. “But wouldn’t the world be boring, if everything in it stayed the same always? These roses, now, if they froze like they are, we’d never think to look at ‘em again. They’d be every bit as lovely, but we wouldn’t notice.”

“So by the time I come back _you’ll_ be gone, and _Nanny’ll_ be gone, and I bet Maggie in the kitchen’ll be _gone_ , too, and there won’t be _any_ point in coming back _at all!”_

“Or. Maybe you’ll bring your new friends to visit, and make friends with the new gardener, and won’t miss me.” _Snip, snip._ “If I were you, I’d knuckle down to being happy. It beats the alternative.”

Warlock kicked the thick, soft grass at the edge of the rosebeds with his heel. “You shouldn’t _have_ to knuckle down to be happy. You should just be able to _do_ it. Like you do.”

“That’s like expecting roses to bloom twice a year without pruning. You think I don’t put in any effort? You’re wrong! You can always find a reason to be miserable, just lying around, like. Sometimes you have to go looking for reasons to be happy. But it’s always worth the effort, and after awhile it gets to be a habit. Once you have the habit, nobody can tell you’re working at it, at all.” _Snip, snip._ “You’ll miss that nanny of yourn more’n you’ll miss me, anyhow.”

Warlock frowned. “I’m too old for a nanny.”

“So? You can miss her without needing her. You know what I think? I think she and Maggie and your mum need one more posy apiece before you go away. What do you think?”

“Mom doesn’t deserve one.”

“You go get your gloves and secaturs and we’ll see how many you want to put together.”

Warlock tried not to smile, and failed. “All right.” He ran off to the shed, where he had heavy leather elbow-length gloves in his size, and his own pair of secaturs, and his own basket. He spent the last half-hour of daylight running around the garden cutting the best and brightest flowers he could without making a hole in the landscape, as Brother Francis had taught him, and then while Brother Francis composted the deadheads and cleaned his tools he perched on his stool at the potting table, arranging them into three piles, because maybe Mom didn’t _deserve_ a bouquet after backing Dad up in the restaurant, but he had a lot of flowers, and maybe it wouldn’t be kind to give some to Nanny and some to Maggie, and none to her. Maybe, if Mom got flowers, she’d be sorry about letting Dad spoil his last night.

The kitchen staff had already gone home for the day, but Warlock knew where the vases were, and Brother Francis, who didn’t like to come inside but could be lured into the kitchen, helped him make the arrangements. Warlock wrote the cards himself, on placecards. The one for Maggie he left on the counter with the card propped against it: _“Good-bye Maggie and thanks for all the biscuits!_ ” The one for his mother he put on the table in the entryway where she’d be sure to see it, and the card said: “ _For Mom_.” The biggest and best one he didn’t put into a vase or make a card for, but carried upstairs by himself in both hands.

The door to his room stood open, light falling out with Nanny’s shadow moving back and forth across it. Not until Warlock reached the door did he realize she was singing, her voice husky and low; and not one of her usual thrillingly eerie and violent songs, either.

_... deep can be,_   
_But not as deep as the love I’m in._   
_I know not if I sink or swim._

_The water is wide. I cannot get over,_

Warlock decided that, if this was the song for today, he might as well sing it, too.

_And neither have I wings to fly._   
_Build me a boat that will carry two,_   
_That both shall row, my love and I._

Nanny turned away from the open suitcase, her hands full of socks, the electric light reflecting off her sunglasses and flaring in her hair, her smile splitting her face open. “Hello, Warlock! Oh, my! Are those for me?” She tucked the socks into the suitcase, and held out her hands to receive the bouquet: roses in the center of a mass of lilies, delphiniums, rhododendrons, hydrangea, and clematis, so the thorns wouldn’t prick her hands. Not that she’d complain if they did, because Nanny was tough as nails. She buried her face in the blossoms and breathed. “So many pretty poisonous ones, too!”

“Brother Francis says every poison is a medicine, if you use it right.”

“And _I_ say every medicine is a poison, if you need it to be.” Nanny grinned at him. “Who taught you that song?”

“Nobody. Brother Francis was singing it when I got back. It’s a going away song, isn’t it? He’s leaving tomorrow, too.”

“Is he?” Nanny went into their shared bathroom and got out the vase she kept under the sink for all the bouquets Warlock brought her. “Why are you home so early? I thought the movie’d let out closer to nine.” She eased the flowers into the vase and fluffed them to look their best.

“It would’ve, if I’d gone. They said I was too bad in the restaurant and didn’t deserve a movie.”

Nanny made the hissing sound that meant she and Warlock agreed that Mom and Dad were Full of It. “Tell me what happened.”

So Warlock told her, as she ran water in the vase and put it on his desk by the window, before sitting down in the rocking chair and leaning forward intently as he paced, swinging his arms and working himself up again. Nanny always wanted to know the details when he was naughty, not like Brother Francis; _what_ he’d done, _why_ he’d done it, what _other_ people had done about it, and everything. He ended by stamping his foot in front of her. “And it wasn’t fair! It was _supposed_ to be my treat, because of leaving tomorrow! What’d they _expect_ me to do?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” said Nanny. “If anybody treated _them_ that way, _they_ wouldn’t like it. And they should know you better than to think you’d take it lying down.”

“How old do I have to be before I grind Them beneath my heel?”

“At least one year more, I’m afraid. Maybe they’ll pay more attention to you after you’ve been gone. Appreciate you more.”

The great thing about being angry was, that Warlock got to feel better about it twice: once when Brother Francis was nice to him, and once when Nanny got angry, too. Everybody else, even Maggie, only said lame or stupid things that made him angrier, talking as if he wasn’t _supposed_ to be angry, ever; like he was the only one who ever did the wrong thing, even though he _never_ got angry unless somebody did something wrong. If he’d kept looking at his phone all through dinner instead of listening to Dad, Dad would’ve been angry; so why shouldn’t it work both ways? “They won’t miss me,” he grumped, flopping down on the bed. “They don’t even _like_ me. That’s why They’re sending me to this school. If I kept going to regular school They’d have to pay attention to me when I got home, or take me to events with Them, after you leave.”

“It doesn’t seem possible for them not to like you, but I don’t know what they’re thinking,” said Nanny. “I never _got_ the whole boarding school thing. How is it supposed to be good for a kid to get sent away? Especially nowadays, when you can just - not have kids if you don’t want them underfoot. It’s _easy_ , especially for people well off enough to afford to be able to send them away. So, yeah, sorry, I’m no help here. If I could explain it all so you could figure out what to do about it, I _would._ ”

“I know,” said Warlock; because he did. Nanny always answered questions, and sometimes the answer was “I don’t know,” which was way better than changing the subject or ignoring the question, like They did. Nanny knew lots of things, though; more than Mom and Dad, more than his teachers, more than Security, who wouldn’t even tell him the best way to kick a kidnapper in the balls, which _had_ to be because they didn’t know, because what kind of stupid Security person wouldn’t share useful knowledge like that if they had it? “I wish _you_ were my Mom.”

“If I were your mum, you wouldn’t be you. That’s genetics,” said Nanny, as she always did, and got up to look into the suitcase. “Now, what’s left here? I know I wasn’t finished.”

“Did you pack my Gameboy?”

“Pfft, like I’d forget something as important as that! Underwear, socks, uniforms, Gameboy, trainers -“

They finished packing the suitcase together, and Warlock sat on it to be sure it would close. The outfit he would wear tomorrow hung all by itself in the cupboard, shoes unnaturally shiny on the floor beneath it. “What shall we do now?” Nanny asked.

Warlock looked around at all his toys, and books, and more toys, already all too young for him. He had, after all, been ten for a week now. They could have a Pokemon battle, but they’d have to open the suitcase again to get the Gameboy out. Plus, he began to feel that he wanted a snack. The restaurant had mostly had lame fancy food and he hadn’t been allowed to order dessert. Nanny never objected to raiding the refrigerator, and that could be fun, but suddenly he had a much better idea. “I know! Let’s visit Brother Francis!”

Nanny looked at him blankly. “What?”

Warlock hopped off the bed. “Brother Francis! We could play a game or something, and he’d give us something to eat!”

“We could get something to eat from the kitchen.”

“He’ll have better stuff! He always does, unless there’s been caterers. And you wouldn’t have to make the tea, he’d do it.”

Nanny’s face did weird things. “Wait, we’re having tea now? Who decided that?”

 _“I_ did! And it’s my last night and I didn’t get my movie so you _have_ to do as I say!”

Her face did a few more weird things, then split open into a laugh. “I _do_ , don’t I? C’mon, then, let’s go barge in on the gardener. Your wish is my command.”

They went out the back door, waving through the camera at the Secret Service person on video duty. The gardener’s cottage was a good way from the house, but had its own camera, and the security lights and Warlock’s familiarity meant they had no trouble getting there in the dark. Warm yellow light shone through flowered curtains, and as they approached they heard music. Warlock ran ahead to hurl himself against the door. “Brother Francis! It’s me and Nanny!”

The door popped open, Brother Francis a silhouette against the dazzle of light. “Warlock? What on earth? Is anything wrong?”

“ _Yes_! Everybody goes away tomorrow and it’s _stupid_ so we’ve come to visit. C’mon, Nanny!” For some reason she had stopped when she reached the place the light fell onto the path.

“Well. All right then. Come in and I’ll make us some tea. And I think I still have some of those chocolate biscuits.” Brother Francis stepped back from the door to let Warlock charge past him to the biscuit tin. Nanny followed more slowly, and he heard them tell each other their names, like they didn’t already know them. Which they might not. Nanny belonged to the indoors, and Brother Francis belonged to the outdoors, and as far as Warlock could remember the closest they ever came to each other was when Nanny sat on the patio overseeing him as he ran around the lawn, and Brother Francis worked where ever he happened to be working that day. When he hung out with Brother Francis - playing or weeding or talking about Stuff - and it was time to come in, Nanny never came and got him, only called from the house, and if they weren’t near the house, Brother Francis tended to pull out his pocketwatch exactly in time to see that he should go in.

“Oi, hellspawn, you don’t get to eat all his biscuits,” Nanny protested when she got properly inside at last.

“I’m not trying to! I’m putting them on a plate so we can all have some!”

“That’s right.” Brother Francis bustled past him into the tiny kitchenette, to fill the kettle at the sink. “He knows what manners are in this house, don’t you worry about that, Miss Ashtoreth! Or is it Mrs?”

Nanny made the strangled sound that meant she wasn’t laughing but wanted to. “Ms, thank you. But you may call me Lilith.”

“I must say it feels like I know you, Master Warlock talks about you so much.”

“Does he?” Nanny, in the middle of the tiny living area, caught Warlock’s eye as he put the plate of biscuits on the table and twitched a mouth-corner smile at him. “What does he say?”

“That you’re terribly clever and know more than his teachers, but tell him the world is only fit to be trampled beneath his feet and he’s not to listen to me.”

“And he tells _me_ that _you’re_ terribly nice no matter what he gets up to, but tell him to have love and reverence for all living things and he’s not to listen to _me_.”

“Oh, don’t fight,” said Warlock, heading for the game shelf. “It’s all our last days and you’re not _allowed_ to fight, so there! Can we play Scrabble?”

“If you like,” said Brother Francis.

“Sseriously?” Nanny sounded odd. Warlock pulled out the Scrabble set, an old wooden one, with the tiles in a maroon velvet bag. “You’re playing _Sscrabble_? With a _ten_ -year-old?”

“We have a handicap system,” said Brother Francis, also sounding odd. But then he looked odd, anyway, without his hat, and in shirtsleeves instead of his smock. “There’s an internet dictionary he gets on his phone, that has all sorts of words like _vlogger_ and _emoji_. I lost a game because I challenged _emoji,_ once. Pray be seated. Warlock and I can see to everything, if you’ll be mother when the tea’s ready. Take one of the chairs and I’ll use the ottoman.”

“Brother Francis knows lots of old, old, old words that are still in my dictionary, though.” Warlock cleared the salt and pepper and sugar off the lazy susan and placed it in the middle of the table to set the board on. “Like, from the 1800s even. But I bet you know more new words.”

“I bet I do.” Nanny sat on one of the hard kitchen chairs while Warlock shook up the tiles in their bag. “Warlock, you use the ottoman. Us old folks need back support and it’s a mistake to let your host be too polite.”

So they played Scrabble and drank milky tea and ate chocolate biscuits, Warlock bouncing up and down on the ottoman and Brother Francis’s old-fashioned CD player providing a background of even more old-fashioned music. At first the grownups were stickily polite, but that changed when Nanny blocked a triple-letter score Brother Francis had been about to use, only for that to set him up for a triple-word score, and after that they were fine. Warlock kept drawing great letters and Nanny and Brother Francis kept challenging each other’s high-scoring words while letting him slip in things he wasn’t positive weren’t hyphenated. Thanks to this, Warlock beat Brother Francis by twenty points, and Nanny by thirty.

When they put the game away and Nanny said they still had half an hour before they needed to go back to the house, Brother Francis said that was time for a story, so Warlock (thinking that this was probably the last time in his life anyone would ever read to him, and that it for sure was the last time Brother Francis would) got him to read his very favorite one, “A Plague of Peacocks,” which was about a town in which lived an awesomely powerful little boy. Brother Francis read it even better than he usually did, making Nanny fall off the settee laughing, an astonishing event that would have made it a red-letter evening all by itself. But then, Brother Francis _gave Warlock the book_ the story was in, and Warlock was so happy and so sad all at the same time that he thought he might explode. Instead he hugged Brother Francis till he squeaked. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I wish you’d come be gardener at my school!”

“I doubt they’d let me play with you, if I did, my dear,” said Brother Francis, hugging him back. “You be kind, and you’ll make plenty of new friends. Won’t need a stodgy old fellow like me at all. We’d better say good-by now. I may be gone before you are, in the morning.”

Nanny waited by the door. “You run ahead, dear. I’d like a grown-up word with Brother Francis, but I’ll be right behind you.”

So Warlock ran ahead, in zig-zags from one security light to the next, leaping to smack moths out of the air with the book, waving at the places he knew secret service men lurked, and “pa-pa-pumming” some of Brother Francis’s music. It seemed a huge waste, now, to have spent so much time with each of them, and only one evening with both. When he grew up and come into his power, he would have his own house, and he’d find Brother Francis and Nanny where ever they’d gone, and they’d come be the gardener and the, oh, the housekeeper, or something, and all live in the same house and have fun together. Maybe he’d adopt a bunch of kids, like Bruce Wayne, and they’d need a nanny while he was busy doing...whatever, he still hadn’t worked out exactly what he wanted to do, except that Mom and Dad would be _impressed,_ and everybody would listen to him the way Brother Francis and Nanny did, and everybody who came to live with him (Maggie could do the cooking, and he’d definitely have a cat and a horse) would enjoy themselves every single day, but everybody who’d ever been mean to him would be sorry.

Mom and Dad still weren’t home by the time Nanny came to say good night and make sure he actually got into bed and put his phone on the charger instead of having it under the covers with him. By then he’d begun to feel the heaviness in his limbs that meant he was done for the day. The heaviness hadn’t invaded his mouth yet, though. His mouth often kept talking while the rest of him drifted off. “You know what I wish?”

“What, dear?” Nanny bent over to pick up her bouquet to carry off to her own room. 

“I wish you and Brother Francis were married a long time ago and had a baby the same age as me that got mixed up with me in the hospital when we were born, so _he_ lived here, and _we_ lived somewhere all together, and I didn’t have to go away to school.”

“Ngk,” said Nanny, freezing with her hands on the vase. “That’s, that’s quite a wish. But. It’s a bit hard on our kid, isn’t it? Brother Francis’s and my imaginary baby?”

“Oh!” That the imaginary baby in this scenario would be more than a necessary placeholder, would be a real person with feelings, had not occurred to him. “Maybe, maybe Mom and Dad would like him better than me? So he wouldn’t be a brat and They wouldn’t ship him off to school?”

Nanny blew out a breath and let go of the vase. “I suspect, if Brother Francis and I were to have a baby, _which we wouldn’t,_ it’d be ten times the brat you ever could be.” She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed his hair back. “Listen. The day is coming - maybe sooner than anybody thinks - when you’ve got to decide who you are. What kind of a person you’ll be. And here’s the thing. Your dad thinks you should be one thing, and your mum thinks you should be something a little different, and Brother Francis and I and your teachers, we’ve all got different ideas about that. But _you’re_ the one who decides who you are. So when the time comes, I want you to remember that. To stand up for yourself. Always.”

Oof. That sounded scary. But the heaviness had reached his face, so he said, “Okay, Nanny,” and yawned.

“That’s my little hellspawn.” Nanny kissed him on the forehead. “Good night.”

“Good night.” He lay back with closed eyes, hearing her collect the vase and move toward the door. “Nanny?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not going very _far_ away, are you?”

“Not too far, no. I promise I’ll see you again.”

“Okay. Good.”

Later, he would have a vague memory of her adding: “If only at the end of the world,” but even for Nanny that was a strange thing to say, so he probably dreamed it.

\---  
 _“And we’d been doing so well!”_

 _“What was I supposed to do? It’s his last night, and the Dowlings spoiled his treat. I swear I’ll find a way to knock their heads together before I go. What was Himself Below_ thinking _, picking those two?”_

_“No offense, but I suspect the idea was to give the poor boy parents who would leave him ripe for his intended role. I only hope that vanishing from his life at this point doesn’t undo such influence as we’ve had so far. I really don’t like this school business. I know I’m hardly up to date on conditions, but one hears dreadful things.”_

_“I vetted it pretty thoroughly. I expect he’ll be all right - s’only one year. And I’ll be monitoring him. The headmaster’s got a gambling problem. I bought up his debts, and providing confidential information on one of his pupils sounds like a great alternative to paying me off in a lump, to him.”_

_“Hmph. How sordid.”_

_“It’d be easy to get you on as a gardener there. I mean, they use a lawn service, but things change.”_

_“No, thank you. Brother Francis will be sending him books and sweets once a month or so. I think that will seem more natural.”_

_“Yeah, you’re probably right. Wouldn’t do him any favors with the other boys to have a grownup around too fond of him. Buck up, angel! We’re in the home stretch now. A year from now, for better or worse, it’ll all be over.”_

_“For better, my dear. I’m sure of it. But we must continue to be very careful. No regular meetings. Telephone calls.”_

_“And rendezvous points, yeah. But then - once it’s over - the Ritz. That picnic. Theater, concerts. Sky’s the limit.”_

_“It’s going to be so lovely, isn’t it?”_

_“You bet! And this time tomorrow, you’ll be back in a waistcoat listening to a gramophone. I thought I’d discorporate when I saw you had a CD player!”_

_“I wasn’t about to risk moving my gramophone! He’s almost to the back door. You’d better catch up.”_

_“Yes, I’d better. Good night, Brother Francis.”_

_“Good night, Ms. Lilith.”_

\----  
In the end, Warlock Dowling’s only active contribution to the failure of the Apocalypse was to stand up to a creepy man and disconcert Hastur enough that he completely forgot to kill any of the humans on the Plains of Megiddo that day.

Which, when you think about it, was a considerable accomplishment for an eleven-year-old child.

-30-


End file.
